Category: Tatalo Alamu

It is a thing of joy to write this foreword to a collection of newspaper articles written by one of Nigeria’s finest and most accomplished journalists. Titled, Media On My Mind and subtitled, Ethics, Governance and Other issues, 2009-2017, it is a compilation of columns written by Lanre Idowu for the highbrow but sadly defunct Next newspaper and other interventions in national affairs around the period so delineated.

To many within and outside his field, Lanre Idowu is an enigma wrapped inside a conundrum: A man whose name is better known than his person. Yet despite his quiet self-effacement, his public school boy good manners, there can be no doubt that he is worth his weight in gold.

Rare in our contemporary world is the person who succeeds in practising what he preaches and preaching what he practices. Rarer still in contemporary journalism is the person who has excelled in both the practice and precept of the trade.  Idowu has made a name and a huge reputation for himself as a worthy practitioner of journalism and as an excellent preceptor of the sacred principles of the trade.

In many cases, there is a mutual antipathy between the preceptor and the practitioner of journalism. The preceptor tends to avoid the rowdy egalitarianism, the instant combustion and endless commotion of the factory floor of actual journalism, while the “field commanders” scoff and sniff at Ivory Tower elitism and the tenured superficialities of academic theorists of journalism and the purveyors of its principles.

A famous professor of Humanities at Harvard once rued how his op-ed pieces for the New York Times were often subjected to merciless parsing by an old codger of a sub-editor who had probably been plying his trade before the professor was born. Nothing escaped the astringent puritan who had no time for fancy phrasing, clever equivocations or elegant ambiguities.

On a local note, yours sincerely could swear that in the early days of The Nation an old man often slipped into the editor’s office carrying a bundle of previous articles in the newspaper with red biro marks flagging off infractions and stylistic infelicities. It was the late Pa Mark Alabi, a revered sub-editor of the old school, who plied his trade for more than half a century in major newspaper industries in Nigeria, particularly The Guardian group. Even in retirement, the old man was not tired.

In Lanre Idowu, there is a glorious symmetry of the two widely divergent tendencies. Watching him from a distance over the years, one is often amazed by his unobtrusiveness, his self-erasures in public fora, his wisdom, his stoic forbearance in the face of professional and institutional adversity, his sunny tempered equanimity, his unfailing judgement, his sense of fairness and his political nous. As the years rolled by, one often wondered: what a great editor lost to the Nigerian world of journalism!!

Is this then another prime example of human wastage at the blood-soaked shrine of a dysfunctional society?  It is to his eternal credit that the author has refused to be wasted. When a path is blocked, it often opens the way to alternative routes. Probing and working his way through the labyrinth of shattered expectations, Idowu has succeeded in carving a niche for himself in the annals of Nigerian journalism.

What Nigerian journalism lost in one department, it has gained in another. Idowu’s Media Review has earned an unrivalled place in contemporary Nigerian journalism as a pace-setter for good writing and a trendy market place of ideas. Despite crushing institutional impediments, financial constraints and the fact that the old Nigerian reading public has disappeared as a result of the collapse of the middle class, Idowu has refused to give up a noble idea.

The annual Diamond Award for Media Excellence (DAME) which Idowu pioneered and nurtured from infancy to institutional relevance and national prestige has become the most comprehensive, the most influential and the most respected Honours board in the history of journalism in Nigeria. Nothing approaches the rigour of its selection process and the scrupulous integrity of the eventual outcome.

It may well be then that it is the huge success of Idowu as the publisher of a trend setting journal and the national respectability of the DAME awards  that have obscured Idowu’s immense gifts as a writer of distinction and master of felicitous prose.  This collection of articles is bound to redress that imbalance and restore Idowu to his deserved position in the commanding heights of contemporary Nigerian journalism.

Many of these essays are a writer’s pure delight. Not a single word or phrase can be said to be out of place. Idowu writes with a sense of modulated urgency, a wonderful clarity of expression and the lapidary precision of a Swiss watchmaker. One is continuously surprised by the uncanny insights, the casually dropped bon mots, and the high sense of patriotic responsibility.

Reading through these articles, there are times when one is gripped by a sense of Déjà vu. Nigeria is a country where history repeats itself continuously with the national actors learning nothing and forgetting nothing.  The articles frame a turbulent phase in Nigeria’s transition from military rule, particularly the high-octave drama and state intrigues surrounding the illness and eventual demise of President Umaru Yar’A dua.

Idowu does not hesitate to give robust judgments, but without any indication of boorish distemper or bovine rudeness. He does not write to court controversy or to cause offence. Despite the occasional magisterial severity of his pronouncements on national ills, an innate good breeding and the ethos of omoluabi shine forth in many of the articles.

This is not entirely unexpected. Scion of a Lagos family originally from Omu, Ijebu , Idowu appreciates the place and importance of civility and courtesy in national discourse. No matter the level of controversy and the acrimony generated, it is these virtues that separate civilized humanity from their animal cousins.

What remains to be said is that these articles are written at a period of global ferment and convulsion powered by the phenomenon known as globalization. The world is changing fast and so is the profession of journalism in both precept and practice as we know them. The transformations have led to radical disruptions in print journalism and electronic communication ushering in a major crisis of production and consumption in contemporary Nigerian journalism.

The advent of the social media and the blogging industry appear to have short-circuited the normal route to stardom and distinction. There are new kids on the bloc and the old rules of engagement can no longer hold up. It is a brave new world of ersatz communication and everyone with access to a computer or a high-tech phone is a news disseminator. In the age of internet revolution, the modern newsroom has become the e-estate of the realm. The development is akin to a Copernican revolution in mass communication.

While advanced societies are slowly adjusting to the development with journalism seeking new ways to respond to the threat of extinction, it has caught the developing world flatfooted. The old precepts of journalism can no longer accommodate new perceptions. This is going to be the gravest challenge to people like Lanre Idowu in the coming years and it may result in their greatest professional triumph.

Just as the rampaging forces of globalization have smashed external borders and national boundaries thus posing a major challenge to the nation-state paradigm, they have also disrupted the old internal professional boundaries and disciplinary borders opening the route to their reconfiguration and redefinition.  In advanced countries, this has led to an unfolding paradigm shift in the way they view the professions and a play of signifiers across rigid disciplinary demarcations.

This has led to a diffusion of institutional authority and a dispersal of old professional legitimacy. In Britain and America for example, it is no longer unusual to find sterling professionals end up as academic theorists of journalism and vice versa.

PhD reporters and well-credentialed interns proliferate in the industry. Disordered order is the order of the moment. Alan Rusbridger, the former editor of the Guardian of London, is the Dean of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and the head of an Oxford College while renowned journalists in America are often headhunted to direct its most prestigious colleges of journalism.

This development is not restricted to journalism. Leading American institutions are pioneering what is known as “Professors of Practice”, a situation in which those who have distinguished themselves in their field of endeavours are appointed to professorial chairs in order to breakdown what Hayek has famously called “the dispersal of knowledge” in the contemporary world.

Sometimes it is a seamless and endless coming and going. Madeleine Albright, the former American Secretary of State, has quietly returned to her professorial chair at Georgetown University. Even in retirement and at over ninety years, Henry Kissinger continues to write astonishing books and can  be seen doing highly lucrative lecture circuits.

Some Nigerian private and public universities are already cottoning on to this international development, particularly in Law, Insurance, Stock Exchange, Banking and Public Finance. When the irresistible gale of globalization forces the rest of the Nigerian University system to open up their frozen and ossified innards, people like Lanre Idowu may yet have their day and their say. This collection of articles is a collector’s gem and is warmly recommended to readers.

IT has been a monsoonal autumn of patriarchs and matriarchs in Nigeria with the heavy floods sweeping away many of the nation’s illustrious sons and daughters. The toll and harvest of death has been heavy on the soul. To think that one would never meet some of these vibrant souls again except in dreams and daylight reveries. Life is a wonderful mystery indeed.

Unconcerned with any lofty abstraction or hoary philosophical grandstanding, Okon has been very busy as he bade some of these great Nigerians farewell in his own practical and pragmatic way without any grammar or turenchi. A day after the death of Tam David-West became public knowledge, Okon suddenly barged into snooper’s bedroom without any formality and with a fuming Baba Lekki in tow.  As usual, the old crook was reeling off a litany of social complaints before the crazy boy cut him short. It was one of those rare mornings when snooper was in a great mood.

“Ha oga, I wan quickly reach Agbowo for them UI, Ibadan with baba make we sign dem condomless register for baba David-West as he don kaput”, the mad boy crowed.

“Okon, I have told you that word is not condomless. It is condolence”, yours sincerely observed with suppressed mirth. No one can be sure when the mad boy is feigning ignorance or playing some linguistic pranks.  Before Okon could respond, the old crook leapt to his defence.

“Whether na kondo or kondom na the same thin”, the old communist contrarian whined as he began to roll his tongue like a savage reptile. Sensing trouble, snooper pretended as if he didn’t hear the senile curmudgeon.

“Ha Okon why Agbowo now? I thought they say Tam lived on campus?” snooper queried.

“Ha oga, dat one tory come get K-leg oo. He get time like dat when baba don retire and them UI Ibadan people wan take him house but baba come chase dem away with him double-barrel. But later dem UI people come bring dem shakabula hunters from Igbo Agala. Naim baba come come run to Agbowo. Na there him dey manage”, the mad boy chortled.

“Tam was a great virologist. But he was also a master of political virus”, the old crook suddenly interjected amidst fake hiccups.

“Baba se you don come with your jibiti grammar again?”, Okon demanded with a merry twinkle.

“You see one Yoruba boy also described Sanya Onabamiro as the guinea worm professor from Ago”, the old man noted and began laughing hysterically.

“Baba I been dey hope say no be dis kind nonsense you go put for dem candorless register becos dem Okrika boys go send you go rest for Sango cemetery”, Okon observed with malicious relish.

“So, Okon what will you put in the register for David-West”, snooper asked.

“I go tell am say if him wan come back he must to change him name to David-North”, the mad boy noted with a wicked smile.

“Okon, why now, why?” snooper demanded, trying very hard to suppress his mirth.

“Becos dem mala boys don corner all dem better job and better contract. Otherwise suffer go whack baba Tam well well again and him go dey see vision when suffer don whack am. From Agbowo dem go transfer am to Lalupon and from Lalupon to dem Igbo Elerin”, the mad boy intoned.

“Okon, why was David-West jailed again?” snooper asked the crazy boy.

“Ha oga no be wetin we dey say? Dem come say baba drink tea or abi na coffee sef?” Okon noted with false exasperation.

“Okon, na dat one dem dey call kaputchino”, the old sadist interjected.

“But didn’t he make some money while he was in government?” yours sincerely inquired.

“Ha oga as for dat one, I sabi where you dey go and I no fit follow you. All I know be say na God almighty go punish all dis dem Lagos peperenpe women,” Okon lamented as he led Baba Lekki out of the room.

 

MILITARY Assisted Democracies, as the acronym suggests, is a barmy oxymoron. Something just does not add up. How can the military, the grandmasters of violent seizure of the apparatuses of democratic governance, also be the great enablers of democracy? But then the real world itself can appear like one grand oxymoron. The world is so full of violent contradictions, of implausible somersaults, such that sometimes one is forced to think the unthinkable and believe the unbelievable.

This normally happens when there is a global epistemological rupture, when the knowledge and belief systems under-girding and safeguarding our life has collapsed under the weight of new realities. The whole world is in a limbo. The old order is surely dead. But the new order is yet to be born, a victim of prolonged and protracted labour which evokes the horrors of a stillbirth.

As a new round of struggle for greater political, economic, gender and spiritual equality takes root in many countries of the world, particularly in what has been hitherto regarded as relatively safe havens of inclusive governance, denizens of developing countries, especially the ethnically and culturally fractured countries of post-colonial Africa and Latin America, must be casting anxious glances at the ticking clock and wondering what the future has in store for them.

For example, the good people of Nigeria, given the full scale electoral wars just enacted in Kogi and Bayelsa states, must be mortified at the prospects of their hard won civil rule transforming into a Mob Assisted Despotism in which armed civilian hordes and other organized militias are far more important in deciding the electoral destiny of the nation than actual voting and the collation of results.

Yet as this column always cautions, all traditional societies, in the process of transition to political modernity, go through periods of stress and trauma. The harshness or severity of the convulsions depends on the countervailing political forces in such societies and the stage the political evolution has reached.

It is therefore imperative for analysts, driven by patriotism rather than partisan consideration, to keep their eyes focused on the ball. For example, it may well be premature to conclude that what we are witnessing in Nigeria is an irreversible political decline; a regression of Military Assisted Democracy into the default setting of Stone Age despotism rather than being a temporary glitch in the system reflecting the cultural and political values of those in transient control of the state which cannot be sustained without the delicate architecture of the nation caving in.

From time to time, the errant Nigerian political class, particularly its hegemonic master cadre, takes delight in testing how adept they are at political brinkmanship, driving the country to the edge of the abyss before suddenly pulling back. It should by now be obvious even to the politically deaf and obtuse that any thought of the Nigerian presidency remaining in the core north after 2023 is an open invitation to the forces of disintegration and dismemberment.

In the not too distant future when all of this would have passed into history, it will be discovered that the two Buhari interregna are historically imperative to compel the nation to learn the right political lessons.

First, the impossibility of expecting serving Third World generals to launch a revolution against the subsisting status quo and thirty five years later the futility of asking a conservative retired general with militant right wing notions of the nation to lead a sanitising crusade against his own class. These things cannot depend on lone, solitary individuals however messianic and deluded but on overriding critical masses.

This is why political developments in Nigeria cannot be treated in isolation but in conjunction with developments elsewhere particularly in Latin America and the rest of Africa. It is now important to answer the opening poser since the military, however discredited and disreputable they have become in many of these countries,  still remain by far the most powerful and cohesive institution which can impose a semblance of order on nations on the verge of a complete breakdown of law and order.

From the events that took place in Bolivia this past week, the rest of the world is asking the question: when is a coup and when does some form of military intervention become inevitable for societies on the verge of total collapse?  Having been bundled into a Mexico-bound plane after the Bolivian military delivered the coup de grace that ended his rule, it was clear last week that former president Evo Morales still did not understand what has hit him.

In his first press conference in a foreign land having fled his own country,  an obviously disorientated Morales, the first indigenous ruler of Bolivia, was pleading that he should be allowed to go back home to complete the two months remaining of his old tenure. Having been formally deposed by the military and his successor legally enabled, this is never going to happen. It is like asking to step into the same river twice.

It is a measure of Morales’ lack of intellectual sophistication and an indication of political obtuseness that he should even ask for this in the first instance. It is also an indication of how far he is removed from the political reality in his own nation.  Observers of the political turbulence that often characterize Latin American politics will be wondering whether the former trade unionist does not consider himself lucky to have survived the intrigues that led to his ouster in one piece.

Had the Bolivian military High Command been racially motivated, the outcome would have been quite tragic. One only needs to contemplate the bloody putsch by General Augustino Pinochet against Salvador Allende in 1973 to gain a proper perspective.  After the military carpet bombed the Presidential Palace, Allende, famously glimpsed fondling a pistol, did not survive the fire fight. The ironic saving grace may well be because Morales’ Bolivia is a less racially and religiously homogenized society.

For Evo Morales, matters need not have ended in this consuming tragedy for himself, his people and his beloved nation. A much valued member of the native Aymara ethnic group, Morales is credited with bringing inclusive development to the whole of Bolivia for the first time in its modern history. Before then, the native people were treated like dregs of the society and unwanted vagrants.

In twelve brisk, bold years of purposeful governance Morales redirected the country’s enormous resources to the poor and neglected of Bolivia in a visionary reconstruction the like of which has never been seen in the history of the country. If after all this, Morales had signed off and respected the constitution of his country, he would have gone down as a hero of his people and the first transformational leader thrown up in their modern history.

But by then the native Indian superstar had developed outsize appetite for power and an insatiable lust for office despite the outward appearance of modesty and Spartan self-denial. After forcing himself on the Bolivian electorate for an illegal third term through dubious constitutional chicanery, Morales resorted to further self-help in the actual election.

As the election results flowed in and before the country’s electoral commission could pronounce, Morales declared himself the emphatic frontrunner even while dropping heavy hints that a coup might be underway. There followed an ominous twenty-four hour freeze on results after which Morales declared himself winner. A political thriller of the Magical Realism variety could not have been more compelling.

The streets erupted in fire and thunder thereafter. The deposed president overestimated his own personal prestige and popular appeal among Bolivians while underestimating the resolve and capacity of many Bolivian nationals to defend their votes and the electoral integrity of the nation. A hurried audit of the election by an international group from the Organization of American States returned a damning verdict of widespread irregularities. Strangely enough, Morales acceded to the verdict but promised to conduct new elections.

It was too little and too late. The protesters were taking none of that nonsense. The opposition leaders rightly insisted that Morales cannot profit from the electoral mess created by his own criminality. This was where the real danger facing Bolivia reared its ugly head as millions of Morales’ native supporters who believe that their hero was being unjustly persecuted by the hegemonic white settler class that had held them down for centuries joined battle with the anti-Morales protesters.

The nation was in danger of sliding into chaos and civil war as casualties from street battles mounted. That danger remains even after the military high command stepped in to technically dismiss Morales from office following a widespread mutiny by the police whose officers joined the anti-Morales protesters. More violence broke out as a staunch opposition leader, Ms Anez, is named as Interim President.

Whichever way one looks at this Bolivian conundrum and the dark shadows of foreboding that still hang over the country, one cannot but commend General Williams Kaliman and the Bolivian military high command for stepping in to save their nation from chaos and implosion. They have wisely refrained from pressing their luck and declaring a full blown military seizure of power.

Words and their meaning often set traps and limits for expanded comprehension. This is one of those strange moments when a coup is not a coup in the classical sense of the term but a necessary and inevitable even if ironic ancillary to democratic development.

The Bolivian military struck a blow for democracy and against constitutional infraction by a deluded and eerily deracinated autocrat. Military Assisted Democracy may be an oxymoron and a loony proposition in many countries, yet in a few it is alive and throbbing with intent and intensity.

As for Evo Morales, his residual appeal and prestige in his country can still be leveraged to find a lasting solution to a bitterly divided and badly polarized nation, once he cures himself of the political hallucination of hoping to return soon to complete his tenure.

The former president must wake to the reality that the tenure is gone perhaps forever even if his party, Movement to Socialism (MAS), remains the single largest political unit in Bolivia. Perhaps his spell in exile will allow him to reflect on the fact that the cool rigours of democratic evolution with its constitutionally delimited timeline must not be confused with the heady rituals of socialist revolution and its constitution-abolishing timelessness.

 

To the old Campos Square, right in front of the ancestral homestead of the Wrights where Baba Lekki has assembled the most outlandish cast of contrary characters that Lagos has seen to bid farewell to his old buddy, Mobolaji.  Even the feckless Okon appeared decidedly out of place as he viewed the weirdoes with dread and apprehension. This lot do not appear to appreciate any misjudged humour and were bound to punish any social infraction with maximum severity.

A wave of weary nostalgia swept through yours sincerely as one arrived at the fabled domain of those Lagosian aristos who set the pace for fashion, politics and culture before the country went to the dogs.   The previous year, it was right in the cramped sitting room of the Brazilian bungalow that snooper bade farewell to his senior friend, Dayo Wright, a great journalist of the seventies, before setting off for the proper reception at the old premises of the iconic Methodist High School.

But this dreary morning as Baba Lekki huffed and puffed welcoming the luminaries of the Nigerian underground, there was no Wright in sight only the faint echoes of the melodious music of the late Biddy Wright, a Lagos musical icon and great son of the Wright family.

Awa arawa lari rawa oo

Ologini ti r’omo ekun

Awa arawa lari rawa ooo

Kajo ma sere ooo…..ee

The old contrarian rarely showed his great musical side. The last time he performed was at the send forth he organized at Iyana Ipaja for the late Gani Fawehinmi, the great human rights crusader and legal Spartacus. But the old man had become inconsolable after the passing of Mobolaji Johnson became public knowledge. He had dropped heavy hints that they were great childhood buddies and that they used to play pranks together while the great soldier was at Methodist Boys.

But just before the great show took off, a heedless Okon ran up to the old man shivering with fright and apprehension.

“Baba, Yanga dey here ooo. Na him dey beat man sotey man dey shit for police cell”, the crazy boy screamed as he pointed at a fearsome looking hulk of a man with missing incisors.

“Shut up Okon. Yanga no dey beat people. Na people him dey kill and him dey light duty today”, the old man crowed with a sadistic smile. At this point, the menacing thug began feverishly rubbing his palms together while singing the praises of his ancestors.

“Baba dem fingers dey hitch man oo, na srious hissing. I wan beat”, the old assassin announced.

“Yanga, I beg no vex. Na Bolaji we come send off today, no be say we come hear kukuruku boy”, Baba Lekki chortled and seized a talking drum from a nearby musician with pronounced tribal marks. Before you could say Jack Robinson, the old crook, an accomplished master of the talking drum, began panning out some subversive lyrics against the subsisting status quo.

Awuyewuye, awuyewuye aroye ote

A o ni e tu’lu oo ilu lani e tunse

This seemed to have worked the crowd into a state of irrecoverable frenzy. The old crook, a master of crowd psychology, leveraged on the feverish pitch. His voice sweet and strangely melodious, the old man began singing with the poise and mannerism of an old pro. “Katigori C”, he boomed as he baited the crowd which instantly bought into the lyrics. It was a classic Apala song by Ayinla Omo Wura in honour and appreciation of the late soldier. The entire place erupted in song and dance.

Katigori C, ile biriki, ten naira lowo wa

Aiye e ma tapa si’joba efara mo Mobolaji

It was as if the devil himself had taken hold of the crowd as they swung and jigged to the pulsating counter-hegemonic drumming with the athletic prowess so beloved of the denizens and artisans of Mushin in the swinging early seventies. For a moment, one could be forgiven for thinking that one was back in that glorious era once again. But during a lull in the singing and dancing, the mad boy put his boot in once again.

“Baba sebi he get one man like dat who dey call himself Lagos Boy before dem Bolaji man, abi no be so?”, the crazy boy sniggered as Yanga began to rub his palms again.

“Okon shut up your kukuruku mouth. Dat one no be proper Lagosian. We know dem real Lagosian, like dem Svevo and dem Elegbede boys”, the old man thundered.

“And who be Sefo abi na suwegbe you call am?”, the mad boy demanded.

“Ah look yeye boy who wan die. Svevo na Admiral Patrick Koshoni, Dat one na real gentleman. If dat other boy you dey talk about annoy me any further, I go show am where dem bury him papa for Papa Lantoro near dem Ewekoro”, the old man thundered as Yanga made a sudden dash for Okon who promptly tore through the crowd.

“Ko baje fun babanla baba e”, Yanga swore in hot pursuit.

It was at this point that the clouds rumbled ominously followed by a volcanic downpour that sent everybody scampering.

“Even the elements are wishing Bolaji goodbye”, Baba Lekki observed wistfully to himself as he headed for his favourite contraband joint near the iconic Lagos City Hall.

It is said that when beggars die, there are no comets seen, but the heavens themselves blaze forth at the death of princes. Brigadier-General Mobolaji Johnson was a prince among men. The heavens have not only blazed forth. They have opened up and the tributes have been pouring ever since the much admired and beloved soldier’s passing a few weeks back.

Tall, poised, polished, supremely good looking, exuding charm and good breeding, Mobolaji Johnson was quite a pleasant revelation in the early days of military rule and a great advertisement for the arms-bearing profession. He was the archetypal Lagosian gentleman who wears his Edwardian hat and opinion lightly. Looking back, it is hard to believe that he was not born into the uppermost crust of the coastal aristocracy.

Such was the upper class grace with which he conducted himself and the nobility with which he discharged his obligations. Johnson showed that for a thinking officer, the last order is not always the last order. In the long run, it is what your conscience makes of the last order that matters. He was a soldier and a statesman.

General Johnson’s public career as a military administrator can be interrogated with a famous Yoruba saying which holds that when people are sent on an errand meant for slaves, they must deliver the message with the honour and proud dignity of the freeborn.

The late officer belongs to a special breed of soldiers who suddenly found themselves in civil governance without being trained or prepared for it. But having found themselves in a no man’s land, they discharged their responsibilities with the highest distinction.

It must be remembered that soldiers are not trained to be civil or unduly sentimental in the discharge of their professional obligations. Theirs is to obey orders and to achieve a set objective with whatever means possible and without any consideration for collateral damage. The situation is often compounded if the military in contention has its originating summons in a colonial army of occupation.

With considerable emotional intelligence, native sensitivity and consideration for the plight of others, Johnson was able to domesticate this harsh and brutal military ethos into a code of humane conduct in civil administration.  Those that couldn’t do so fell into the infamy of military misrule and are remembered in popular narratives for their brutality and sadistic misconduct.

Although he ruled very much under the shadow and might of a federal government, Johnson succeeded in carving a niche for himself as a remarkable and civilized military administrator.  The Lagos-born soldier was a lowly major when he was tipped for the post of military administrator for the capital territory by the short-lived regime of General Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi.

Johnson was retained by the then Lieutenant Colonel Yakubu Gowon after the bloody coup that toppled the Ironsi regime.  After the creation of states on the eve of the Nigerian civil war, he was made full military governor of the newly created Lagos State, a post he held down for eight years until Gowon himself was toppled in a military putsch in August, 1975.

In all, Johnson ruled Lagos for a whopping nine years, the longest serving military administrator in the history of the country, rising through the military ladder to become a one star general and wisely keeping out of high-wire military politics and deadly power play until his number came up. In the event, Lagos was his first and last posting.

The love, respect and admiration shown to General Johnson during his lifetime by his Yoruba compatriots and the outpouring of grief and public display of emotions on his passing betray a fundamental ambivalence about Yoruba attitude to the military profession which is at the heart of their culture and cosmology.

Although they respect and admire the soldering profession, considering arms bearers as the protectors and custodians of the realm, they often view military irruption into politics and statecraft with loathing and apprehension, an example of forcible gate crashing into a sphere of life for which they were ill-suited and ill-prepared.

In the old Oyo Empire, the top military commanders were usually restricted to remote outposts, never to be seen within the precincts of the capital except when they were on routine consultations. The political mess made of empire by the Afonja rebellion which opened the door into a maelstrom of intrigues and military treachery that eventually led to the liquidation of the most ambitious Yoruba political project ever remains evergreen in the people’s political and cultural memory.

Consequently, the contemporary romance among the Yoruba people with military civility, polish and courtesy as encoded in the ethos of omoluabi  can be interpreted as a backhanded compliment which comes with a typically Yoruba double-edged ambiguity. It is another way of saying, look folks, we do not know or appreciate what you are doing here, but it can be tolerated as long as you do it with a measure of courtesy and good manners, and with brisk dispatch.

Almost without exception, the Yoruba military sons their people admire most are usually imbued with a high degree of polish, courtesy and civility. For a people of empire, this disdain for martial swashbuckling and overbearing military arrogance is strange and confounding to say the least. But it may well be a way of organizing an open society based on conciliation and compromise rather than armed intimidation.

Perhaps it also speaks poignantly to the abiding trauma of a people who have been continuously embroiled in wars for almost three centuries, the last one a nasty series of civil wars which lasted for almost a century and only ended when the colonial authorities drove the combatants away from the front by which time the hostilities had stalemated into fitful exchanges of artillery volleys from newly acquired maxim guns.

Whatever it is, the Yoruba aversion for rampart militarism has its manifest disadvantages. It has led the Yoruba holding the short end of the stick in the brutal coliseum that is the post-colonial garrison nation.  In this political gymnasium, power flows from the fixed bayonets and the control of all military and paramilitary institutions of the state and their security apparatuses.

The power pragmatists of modern Nigeria, reaping bounteous rewards of insight from their own background of conquest and domination of diverse people in their region, came to the conclusion quite early that force is the centralizing glue for any nation of diverse nationalities with countervailing and mutually unintelligible political cultures.

Without the express and manifest backing of this feudal military complex, the Yoruba nation in post-independence Nigeria has seen its leading sons repeatedly thwarted at the last post. The endgame has always been the same: humiliation, imprisonment or outright murder.

The only exception to the rule has been General Olusegun Obasanjo, a man of extraordinary native cunning and intelligence who bested the power masters at their own game. But Obasanjo himself owes his luck to a dramatic and miraculous reprieve from the Gulag of the politically expired and expendable after humiliation and imprisonment by his erstwhile military subordinates. Yoruba sons hoping to rule Nigeria after the Buhari era must take note of this fascist terror machine.

Yet it should now be obvious that this insistence on holding a society down by feudal force and sheer military terror has its downside. It leads to economic stultification, the liquidation of human creative spirit and rising political inequality which turns a society into a roiling hell on earth as a result of fierce spiritual, economic, political rebellion and armed critiques. This is the lot of northern Nigeria today and the virus is being insinuated to the rest of the country.

It has been concluded by modern sociologists that greater equality makes a society stronger and more economically productive. This is why the western parts of the nation with their liberality and tolerance and despite military setbacks and occasional political hostilities among its fractious elite, remain the most economically productive and politically advanced segment of the nation.

It is to the eternal credit of General Mobolaji Johnson that he was able to tap into this abiding cultural habitus of his people without making any fuss or fanfare about it. By so doing, he was able to run an open and inclusive government, avoiding the banana peels of what is known in local parlance as military gra-gra while opting for governance based on consensus, compromise and conciliation.  His handling of the Coker controversy remains a template of elite conciliation, fair-mindedness and unblemished integrity.

Nobility must have its obligation. Mobolaji Johnson was also very much a man of the people, with his housing and transportation schemes remaining a lasting legacy of charity and humane compassion for the poor and downtrodden of the society. The people reciprocated with love and affection. The late local musical gadfly and hell raiser, Ayinla Omo-Wura, aka Eegunmagaji, waxed an Apala classic in support of his housing programme which resonates till date.

In retirement Johnson remained a model gentleman and quintessential omoluabi, opting to live in the quiet suburb of Ilupeju rather than the swanky highbrow areas of Lagos Island. Public admiration and respect for him soared after a military board of inquiry absolved him of any wrongdoing or corrupt practices while in office. May the soul of this great compatriot rest in perfect peace.

WRITING about the dreary and inexact subject of Economics is a truly confounding exercise. Yet there are times when one cannot shy away from the patriotic obligation. No discipline can be more exacting than modern Economics. Consensus is rare and intellectual unanimity even more elusive. Yet in the hallowed field of Medical Sciences, physicians are aware when the object of their skilful attention is about to expire. It is only a certain species of economists who pretend otherwise even as the object of their learned attention goes into rigor mortis.

About twelve weeks ago, the Nigerian federal authorities, fearing that the nation might simply collapse economically as a result of its having become a vast dumping site for imported goods smuggled through our neighbouring countries, closed the borders of the country. As usual with everything Nigerian, the move has elicited mixed reaction with the country split along the traditional fault lines of ethnicity, regionalism and religion.

To be sure, it was a drastic and extreme move which in a normal democracy ought to have been driven by elite consensus and conciliation. But we live in extraordinary times and an unusual democratic arrangement. After some initial objections, the protests petered out. It is obvious that despite having fallen prey to the hocus-pocus of neo-liberal economic orthodoxy in recent times, President Mohammadu Buhari  still retains an awkward sense of the economic nationalism of his youth.

As a doctrine of economic growth and inclusive development, Economic Nationalism, with its Keynesian echoes, is often dismissed by chic sophisticates of the Bretton Wood consensus against developing regions as sheer economic illiteracy. It has not occurred to our modern economists that regurgitating western economic theories with Pavlovian punctuality without adapting them to specific local conditions is a higher and more dangerous form of illiteracy.

It is on record that it is when economic nationalists are in control of the engine room of Nigeria’s economy, from Chief Obafemi Awolowo during the civil war to Professor Sam Aluko and Anthony Ani during the Abacha regime, that Nigeria has recorded its greatest economic growth and relative currency stability.

For example, it is well known that Awolowo managed the Nigerian economy in a war situation without borrowing a penny and with plenty to spare. And despite the political depredations of the era and his own untrammelled personal burglary of the Exchequer, the naira was stable throughout General Abacha’s reign of terror and the nation’s economy experienced relative growth.

The neoliberal canard about big spending which turns the state into a huge economic alms house for unproductive mendicants cannot apply to developing countries, particularly if the spending is wise and invested in infrastructural developments. You cannot roll back a state which is yet to find or fulfil its organic destiny.

African nations yet to domesticate and consolidate the nation-state paradigm are being frogmarched to frontiers beyond the nation. This is the bane of our local economists trained and hooked on theories meant for other societies and who mouth such economic shibboleths to the applause of their western backers and entrenched interests.

Whatever the political failures of the Buhari administration and the reservations of pan-Africanists who are still sold on the nostalgia one big African community, it will be intellectually dishonest not to applaud the decision of the federal authorities to close off our borders for now. To many of our neighbours, Nigeria is not a country at all but a huge dumping site for smuggled goods and other nefarious cross-border activities.

The shameless, state-driven xenophobia emanating from South Africa notwithstanding, Nigeria remains the only African country that has found the pluck and temerity to drive the nation-state paradigm imposed on hapless African communities to its ultimate conclusion in a way and manner that suggest a countervailing move to developments on the global chessboard.

If the Nigerian authorities are conscious of the geo-political implications of what they are about, it is all well and good. But if it is a case of intuitively sleepwalking to the right answer, then it is fraught with mortal perils as we will advance shortly for both nation and its rulers. By enacting closure at the sacred shrine of modern nationhood, Nigeria is following developments from the west itself.

Having pioneered and benefitted twice in human history from the momentum of globalization, first with the internationalization of political slavery and now with the internationalization of economic slavery, western nations are recoiling in horror and terror as the ultimate logic of their own creation begins its homeward journey.

Hence the frantic retreat to primal and even primitive nationhood by the same leading western nations that pioneered the two historic waves of globalization. As usual and without any sense of irony, Donald Trump is on record as having showered praises on the apostles of ultra-nationalism who are thwarting the advances of globalization by defending their nation with any means and method possible.

In civilized bastions of liberal tolerance in Europe such as France, Holland, Hungary, Italy and Poland, we have witnessed the eruption of racial hatred and the ascendancy of extreme right-wing groups. In Britain, the country of good manners, the rise of xenophobia, the whole Brexit rumpus and the rise of one-nation nationalists led by Boris Johnson who is himself of Turkish extraction represents a forlorn attempt to stall the march of history.

Former voluble internationalists have now strangely transformed into ardent nationalists.  In the end, perhaps nothing can beat Robertson’s classic description of globalization as “the universalization of the particular and the particularization of the universal”.  In this instance, the universalized is western capitalism which ought to have many unique variants all over the world and the particularized is the attempt to impose western capitalism on the rest of the world.

That move has met a catastrophic end, and the west is in full retreat. Leading the resistance from the weakened ideological rampart of the old left are vibrant ultra-nationalist countries such as China, Russia, North Korea and the remaining enclaves of socialism. From the right Singapore, Malaysia, Iran, India and one or two Arab monarchies in the Gulf States are baying at the notion of one-race capitalism.

In this emerging polarization of the world driven by the ideology of nationalism rather than the old bifurcation along class lines, no one is sure where African countries stand within the divide. Most African nations are too riven by internal schisms of ethnicity, religion, culture and countervailing worldviews for its political elites to make a strong pitch for any form of nationalism, except when they are confusing ethnic interests with national interest.

Last week, the Nigerian authorities began to climb down from their high horse of ultra-nationalism and autarky by giving conditions for the reopening of borders and stipulating a timeline. Just as one had suspected, the whole thing has been a combination of bluff and bluster rather than arising from a holistic strategy which is normally a function of a strenuous and stringent intellectual evaluation of national needs. In short, it is one of those strange whimsical impulses so characteristic of the current administration.

Autarky, or extreme self-isolation based on economic self-possession and self-reliance, is normally based on sterner stuff. It can only come from a nationalist political elite forged in an overriding ideological war or steeled in elite consensus based on negotiated national destiny or a combination of both.

In the case of former socialist countries such as the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Vietnam and North Korea, it is the former. In the case of old and emerging democracies such as America, India, Britain, South Korea and post-Franco Spain, it is the latter or the combination. Nigeria is yet to throw up such an elite group. It can also help if a nation has an indigenous tradition of home-evolved capitalism such as the chaebol oligopoly in South Korea or the Juche doctrine of Spartan self-reliance from North Korea.

It is to be noted that several traditional societies in what has become Nigeria practised a rudimentary and pre-industrial version of capitalism. Although this can no longer pass muster in the face of the onslaught of western modernity, the elite unanimity that drove them ought to be noted and applauded.

When Pandit Nehru famously declared that if Indians could not feed themselves let them go hungry or if they could not build their own indigenous car let them trek, he was confident of his own shinning personal example and of a nationalist political elite that would not sabotage this immaculate vision of national self-pride and sense of worth no matter the personal rivalries and differences. India boasts of an ancient, well-heeled and well-ordered civilization which had already established its own pre-modern versions of university by the eighth and ninth centuries.

The Cambridge-trained, intellectually self-assured Singaporean founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, boasted with supreme self-confidence that he and his close associates and collaborators routinely took apart imported doctrines and ideas from the west before isolating what was useful to his country and thereafter dumping in the rubbish heap what was useless and inapplicable. So does the equally accomplished recently returned nonagenarian ruler of Malaysia, Dr Mahathir Bin Mohamad.

Yet it is not as if Nigeria has not thrown up its own local avatars. In the fifties, a man known as Mazi Mbonu Ojike, was already preaching the doctrine of boycott all the boycottable.  Even more famously by 1945, Obafemi Awolowo, a private Law student in London, was already contesting the affliction of unitary federalism foisted on the nation by our imperialist masters.

Here is the crux of the problem. A nation that will borrow any money from anywhere in the world to finance its deficit budget, a nation whose political leadership is so steeped in primitive hedonism that they hanker after any western luxury goods and gadgets, including the latest automobiles, aeroplanes, shoes and expensive watches and most tellingly a nation whose president is currently on medical tourism in the hallowed epicentre of metropolitan mayhem, cannot afford to preach not to talk of practise economic autonomy without inviting mortal peril on its own head.

This whole drama about border closure reminds one of an infamous argument once canvassed by one of our forgettable military regimes. We were told that in Nigeria, a bottle of coke was more expensive than a litre of petrol and therefore in order to discourage the rampart smuggling of the prime good across our border, it was mandatory to drastically increase the price of petrol products.

Thirty years and several price quadrupling later, the phantom subsidy not only remains but petrol continues to be smuggled across our borders. Meanwhile like the condemned of Altona, the number of people living in absolute poverty has quadrupled even as the old Nigerian middle class has been obliterated. Before our very eyes, Nigeria has become one hell of a place to live in and a vast penal colony boasting of its own internal horror chambers where citizens are chained and tortured without any recourse to law and order.

The current drive against corruption and recovery of stolen money must be commended despite its awkward partisanship and polarizing one-sidedness. But unless the leadership finds the true moral courage and vision to rein in the recurring fiscal prodigality as seen in the reckless unbudgeted spending by the executive and the legislative infamy which still defends the humongous pay packets of our law makers, the run on the naira will continue leading to devaluation and further ruination of the Nigerian people.

Unless we urgently find a nationalist ruling class and a leadership with the will and altruistic courage to do the needful, it is obvious that a world-historic implosion is loading in Nigeria. The most dangerous thing about false and hypocritical pretences to autarky is that it can actually be used by clerical fascists and extreme reactionary groups to quash genuine efforts aimed at local and sub-national self-sufficiency on the altar of a bogus national interest. We surely live in perilous times in Nigeria.

 

AND while we are still on the trail of border closures and the never ending duels between Custom people and crack smugglers and other outlaws of the remote and not too remote outposts bent on outwitting them, it is meet to entertain ourselves with this outlandish tale of a master smuggler in a remote border post of the sandy parched land between Sudan and Egypt.

This is a story of human ingenuity, cunning and extraordinary daring as told by a former Station master of a leading Western Intelligence Agency based in Khartoum. In the vast arid stretches of the great Sahara Desert, nomadic mystery often meets Sufi mysticism. Our narrator himself was mystery personified. Having retired in controversial circumstances, he divided his time plying the American eastern coast back and forth in his luxury yacht sometimes coming ashore in some coastal cities to visit friends and to fill his lungs with fresh air.

It was on one of these rare berthing that snooper met him in the house of a mutual friend. He was a tall angular man wearing a snow-white gelabiya and had become so acculturated in Arab ways that he could easily pass for an Omdurman dervish or high-caste Omani nobleman.  Conversation initially centred on Arab history and the doctrine of Ibn Khaldun, the great fifteenth century Egyptian sociologist. But after a splendid dinner of lobsters and giant prawns, the old spymaster, a master raconteur, became endearingly voluble.

According to him, Jafar el-Sodani was a well-known master smuggler from a village on the lower Nile who had had several brushes with the authorities on account of his smuggling activities. But he was always lightly left off the hook on account of his connections in high places. After one of such confrontations in which he narrowly escaped being executed on the orders of a new no-nonsense Sudanese military ruler, the old rogue appeared to have turned a new leaf forswearing his criminal past.

Thereafter a glum and otherworldly-looking Jafar would be seen at the same border post on a regular basis, entering Sudan from Egypt on a bicycle carrying a heavy bag of sand. After rigorously searching the bag of sand, they would let him off, wondering why a sane man would be found lugging a bag of sand from Egypt.

It was then concluded that he had either lost his mind or was making some spiritual atonement for his sordid past. But still, something did not add up. Years later, a prosperous and contented Jafar was accosted on the street of Khartoum by a retired custom inspector who seemed to have had a flash of illumination.

“By the way, Jafar what were you smuggling all those years?” he was asked by the retired inspector.

“Bicycles, idiot”, came the deadpan answer. You can never win with determined smugglers.

 

 

By Tatalo Alamu

Wonders will never cease in this most wondrous and entertaining land. As they say it is one wonder per one day. When you are not hearing of some women forming The Mothers of Yahoo Boys Union, you are hearing rumours of a departing governor hurriedly granting state pardon to a recently convicted husband-killer who was immediately shipped out of the country.

As soon as the news hit the airwaves of a Lebanese huckster who was hurled down from the ceiling of his luxury pile with his pouch of juju strangely intact, Okon’s brains went into over-drive gear about how to cotton in on the act.

“Baba, I wan quickly reach dem EFCC auction to see if dem go sell me dem Oyinbo man’s juju”, the crazy boy announced to Baba Lekki who was in high spirit after downing a bottle of illicit spirit.

“Okon, you are a big fool. Dat one no be correct Oyinbo. Na counterfeit Oyinbo like dem old Ijebu coin. Him be Kora “, a staggering Baba Lekki enthused with drunken gusto.

“Baba wetin be Kora again? I hope you no dey talk about dem Muslim bible. I no want make dem Boko Haram people come finish man ooo.”, a clearly rattled Okon cautioned the old man.

“Okon, leave me alone o jare. Dis dem Sapele water too hot. Hem dey burn my belly like fire. Na real manya oku as dem Ibo go say. Hen hen, Okon with that your kukuruku head, wetin you say you wan go do for EFCC again?” the old man groaned.

“Baba, I been dey wonder if dem EFCC fit action dem Kura man juju for Okon”, Okon asked rather plaintively which elicited protracted hiccups and a burst of wild laughter from the old man.

read alao

“Okon, true, true dem Kora people be real kura. But this thin you dey ask for come remind man of dem Yoruba saying. Agilinti come quench and dem one use him skin for juju wey go make man no quench ever. So where dem Agilinti sef be?” the old man demanded.

“Baba dat one na Ijapa riddle by dem crazy Yoruba people and he no concern me at all sam sam”, the mad boy chortled.

“Okon. the thin be say if dem juju get any power how come dem drag Kora out of dem ceiling like dem foolish monkey like dat?” the old man demanded.

“Baba na you dey look for trouble. Whether dem juju work or he no work no concern Okon. Na  dem money concern Okon. Make juju reach market first and make money reach Okon pocket”, the crazy boy crowed with wild relish. It was on that note that snooper shut the door of his bedroom against the loony pair.

By Tatalo Alamu

 

The godfather never sleeps indeed. If he ever does, particularly in the political jungle of post-colonial Nigeria, it must be with both eyes wide-opened. With the  duel between Adams Oshiomhole  and Godwin Obaseki, the Governor of Edo State and erstwhile political godson, now assuming an ominous and tragic dimension, perhaps the time has come to beam a searchlight on the phenomenon of godfatherism in contemporary Nigerian politics and how it impacts on the tortuous transition to democracy in the country.

Last week we noted that in Nigeria as well as most African nations, the transition to political modernity is often hobbled by the residual accretions of traditional authoritarian societies as they confront and clash with the imperatives and demands of modern nationhood as well as the fundamental cannons of liberal democracy. In the push and pull of contrasting values and countervailing notions of the nation, foundational rules of liberal democracy often give way to frank autocracy or sometimes the insurmountable contradictions prove fatal to the nation itself.

When Charles de Gaulle observed that the graveyard is filled with the bones of indispensable men, he could have had Nigeria’s Fourth Republic in mind.  De Gaulle was a military genius, exemplary political strategist and master prose stylist of the modern French language. The great French soldier was also a profound observer of human frailties.

Matching De Gaulle genius for genius, wit for wit and epigrammatic brilliance for epigrammatic brilliance is Enoch Powell, the late British politician, who mournfully observed that all political careers end in failure. Powell was a full professor of Classics at the age of twenty four, a brigadier general during the Second World War and a major political star in British politics before his own career succumbed to his dyspeptic dictum. Between the two titans lies some home truth.

It is to be noted that with the possible exception of Lagos state where the most proactive and potent political machine for mass mobilization and elite containment is in place, virtually all the violent contestations between godfathers and their estranged political godsons in the Fourth Republic have ended in defeat, disgrace and defenestration for the godfathers.

Yet godfatherism is a human phenomenon, taking its particular colouration from epoch and society. In its manifestation in post-military Nigeria, an influential and powerful political Capone takes a younger colleague under his wings and whose career he or she proceeds to guide, protect and nurture to full stardom. If he ever rises to the pinnacle of power, he is expected, all things being equal, to be full of gratitude and reverence for the person who has put him there, in short he is expected to become his alter ego.

But this is where the immutable law of the political jungle kicks in.  According to the famous logic of Catch 22, one’s concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers real and immediate is the product of a rational mind. There is no paddy for jungle.

Godfatherism exists in all the professions, particularly in academics, military and business. But in almost all of them, there are unspoken rules and codified regulations guiding operational procedures. As ruthless and lawless as mafia clans may appear, they have a stringent code of conduct. One of which is the Law of omerta, or code of absolute silence. But in the corruption-driven, ego-fuelled politics of post-military Nigeria marked by sheer lack of ideological commonality and shared political values, lawlessness is the guiding law.

In what would have been otherwise unthinkable in normal, conventional and organic political parties, Oshiomhole traversed and scoured the length and breadth of the country in search of  a durable, worthy and dependable successor; a safe pair hands that could sustain and safeguard his legacy while protecting his political base.

When eventually the wily tactician and combat-ready master of agitation politics appeared in public with the dour, sober and durable-looking technocrat and scion of Benin aristocracy, it was hailed by many as a political master-stroke and game-changer. Oshiomhole, himself a notorious slayer of hapless godfathers, appeared to have leapfrogged the banana peels that have seen his victims mumbling from the political graveyard.

Read Also: BREAKING: Obaseki, Oba of Lagos attacked at Oshiomhole’s residence

Yet despite resounding electoral victory, it has all ended in tears and nasty public recrimination. It was too good to be true. There have even been allegations of assault and political burglary. It would seem that the original curse of monarchical and dynastic succession politics in what is supposed to be a “free democracy” is yet to run its full course and be fully expiated. Otherwise, how else can one explain the ugly spectacle of father and political son publicly duelling unto death in what can only end in the mutual ruination of the contending parties, the one his throne and the other his base?

But rather than relying on metaphysical explanations for a concrete and physical political conundrum, it may be useful at this point to deepen the analysis by borrowing countervailing insights from Literary Theory and Literature itself.

In his famous theory of the anxiety of influence, Harold Bloom, himself borrowing from Freud, has advanced the thesis that in literature and criticism –and perhaps in life—the prime psychological preoccupation of the godson is to slay his godfather in order to gain access to his wealth, fame and influence. In this oedipal maelstrom, nothing can be taken for granted. The godfather must kill off the godson or the godson will kill the father eventually.

In a countervailing proposition, Henrik Ibsen, the great Nordic playwright, takes an intriguing perspective. In the play, The Master Builder, we behold a great architect whose sole psychological preoccupation is to thwart his gifted godsons at all costs and all means possible and to prevent them from reaching maturity and full stardom so as not to rival or threaten his pole position. Is there a master builder in every great professional?

It is this titanic struggle between destructive master-builders and their equally volatile and predatory godsons driven by oedipal animus that shape and define the contour of politics in the post-colonial coliseum. Taken together, the two contrasting insights present an engrossing parable for contemporary political developments in post-military Nigeria.

In more evolved societies and democratised nations that have moved away from the politics of patrimony and primitive accumulation, the destructive impact of the struggle is lessened and absorbed by the impersonal rigour of the system in all its stern impartiality. For example, it is implausible for a modern British prime minister or even less so a contemporary American president to insist on determining their successor or to ride roughshod over established guidelines for smooth succession.

And to think that things were not always like this. The current situation is an acute and accurate reflection of the balances of forces and the political powers at play. You cannot crash the gear of history except through revolution. Where we are coming from eventually determines and condition where we are going.

In the First Republic, the main parties were better organized and far more organic than what currently subsists. It would be quite a stretch for anybody to imagine that Chief S.L Akintola was Obafemi Awolowo’s political godson. They were both equal founders and joiners of the Action Group.

Neither can the thought be entertained that Abubakar Tafawa-Balewa was Ahmadu Bello’s political poodle. As a matter of fact at the first ever organised convention of what eventually transformed to the NPC in Jos at the end of the forties, Balewa, a better known entity and widely recognized leader in his own right, was already coasting to victory when the feudal rally intervened and secured victory for the scion of the Othman Dan Fodio oligarchy.

We must note for the sake of historical illumination that Akintola was not Awolowo’s first choice to succeed him as premier of the old Western Region. He was prevailed upon by royalist and right-wing forces that formed a vital component of the Action Group. Right from inception, the Action Group was an unstable congruence of left-wing progressive elements and right-wing, royalist and conservative entities.

When the inevitable split came, it was purely on ideological and political grounds and not personality tussles. In his bid to confront feudalism which he fingered as the bane of Nigeria’s political and economic development, Awolowo took a sharp lurch to the left by embracing the principles of democratic socialism.

To the pragmatic, right-wing conservative elements in the party that favoured accommodation and engagement with the northern oligarchy, this open declaration of warfare was nothing but political suicide and they accordingly demurred opening the door to external manipulation of the fault line and the eventual disintegration of the party.

Needless to add that the ensuing bitter tussle ended in mutual political ruination of the contending classes and the collapse of the First Republic which opened the door to the long night of military despotism whose ripple effects and post-traumatic stress are still being felt in the current republic.

All over the world, the military, particularly its uppermost caste, is an essentially conservative organization which privileges order and stability over political, economic and social justice. When a Nigerian military leader infamously declared that he did not know who would succeed him but he knew who would not, he was flying the kite for the politics of godfatherism and of deliberate and systematic exclusion.

The military insistence on having its way led to the collapse of the Third Republic in vitro and the tragic demystification of the army as a national  institution. But the army quickly gathered its wits and was able to impose its will on the nation through more covert and insidious means in the Fourth Republic.

Yet as soon as General Obasanjo became the official candidate of the PDP, he roundly ignored the frontrunners for the Vice Presidential slot and went for a lowly Atiku Abubakar  with a paramilitary background whom he famously asked whether he could obey simple instructions. Thus the foundation of the politics of godfatherism and deliberate exclusion was laid for the Fourth Republic.

The whole thing ended in nasty public recrimination and a protracted grudge match which affected the ability of the Obasanjo presidency to discharge its obligation in its last three years. Yet as a parting gift to the nation, Obasanjo, again out of turn and against the run of play, imposed Umaru Yar’Adua, a man with a tamer temperament and better credentials as a democrat with whom the Owu warrior had no ideological and political commonality beyond the fact that his late brother was Obasanjo’s loyal deputy as military head of state.

But as soon as Umaru Yar’Adua got to Aso Rock, he began dismantling Obasanjo’s legacy with a chilling resolve and to Obasanjo’s chagrin. In fact so peeved was the former president with Yar’Adua’s demolition work that he bitterly dismissed him as an ungrateful wretch in his memoirs. Once again, a godson has devoured his godfather.

The Fourth Republic is now suffused with this phenomenon. At the last count, in at least fourteen states all over the country, we have seen godsons lock horn with their godfathers. Some godfathers have been sent on what the Russians call internal deportation. More will come. Just like the civilian autocracy we are saddled with, it is an accurate reflection of the stage and state of our democratic evolution.

TO the trendy and pace-setting Mercury Television in upmarket Magodo where the impossible Okon is fielding question on the state of the nation having been declared Man of the Decade by a rogue organization calling itself Movement for the Survival of the Indigenous People of Nigeria, MOSOSIPN. It was a wet and soggy morning with thunder crackling in the background as torrential rains pounded the old capital into submission.

The truth of the matter is that the award is the equivalent of a time bomb, akin to hauling out the buried tail of a quiet cobra. Before then, Okon had been strangely silent, his lips having been firmly sealed for him by economic adversity. He had lost all passion and enthusiasm for political hell-raising and had become reconciled to the immutable reality of the status quo. The subsisting economic meltdown is enough to turn the most stout-hearted of men into a political eunuch.

But the Okon on stage this drooling morning was a different proposition altogether. He was his old insolent self all over again, preening and prancing across the stage while eyeing everybody with a haughty stare. He had been joined by a shivering and thoroughly drenched Baba Lekki who cursed everybody on sight while protesting that he had to swim through three mighty rivers before getting to the venue.

“So baba, how you waka come here?” Okon demanded with an impish sneer.

“I no waka. I come swim across dem Alapere Peninsula. Dem fish dey bite me and I come bite dem back”, the old codger whimpered.

“Baba no come cause trouble here. We no dey discuss penis here”, Okon chided the old contrarian.

“Shut up, Okon. Don’t dabble into matters beyond your comprehension”, the old man snarled.

“Ha baba, na true. As for comprehension, I failed that one sotey for school before dem throw man comot”. A contrite Okon replied. The lead interviewer moved to end the tiff between the loony pair.

“Chief Okon, what is your take on the state of the nation?” he demanded.

“I no take am at all at all sam sam”, Okon charged back with superior scorn.

“ I mean what is the state of the nation?” the interviewer asked the crazy chap.

“Ha, dat one na Kogi state. Abi no be for dem state dem give dem mad governor ten billion for debt? Na awuff money be dat one. Dem yeye boy go blow am,” Okon retorted with a wicked grin.

“Okon, dat one na Votamoni (Voter money) Dem wicked boy go spend one billion and him go pocket dem nine. I go reach dem place make I collect my own. As my mother come from dem Iyamoye village dat one na D.E.N”, the old crook snorted.

“Baba wetin be DEN again?” Okon inquired.

“Dual Ethnic Nationality. I fit vote for two states. By the time dem rogue boy spend one billion to buy bush meat for dem pounded yam people,  dem all go dey sing Sai baba to dem voting centre”, Baba Lekki crowed with sadistic delight.

“Kai, we don enter dem one chance vehicle for this country”, one angry man screamed.

“Sebi when you enter one chance vehicle you still get one chance, abi? Dis one na no chance vehicle” Baba Lekki responded with heavy sarcasm. It was at this point that a clearly alarmed Okon began to shout. “Make dem security people dey tally wetin baba dey say oo. Efik boy no fit go Kirikiri for Yoruba man oo. Na Yoruba people dey cause trouble for dis country and na dem go vamoose when dem trouble  come ooo”.

“Shut up, omo ale (bastard)”, one irate Yoruba man shouted from the audience.

“But why can’t this man just stay at home to fix the problem? “, another man lamented close to tears .

“Ah na Sokugo or wandering disease dey worry dat one”, Baba Lekki snorted with wild relish. Having had enough of the old man, an irate crowd of political partisans leapt on the stage and began to rough handle everybody. As pandemonium reigned supreme, Okon slipped through the back door.